This invention relates generally to online sharing of media content, and in particular to restoring the program information that is typically lost when users sample clips from broadcast programs and then share those clips online. The invention is also related to various uses of the restored program information, such as media searching, automatic broadcast attribution, and targeting advertisements.
The Internet has seen an explosive growth of user-generated content (UGC), which is now available online from a vast number of community sharing websites and other online sharing systems. Many websites cater exclusively or almost exclusively to receiving UGC from users and then offering that content to other users. While some of this UGC is created by the users who upload the content, a significant, if not a majority, of the content is obtained from users who have sampled (or “clipped”) the content from a broadcast program and then uploaded the clip. This leads to a number of problems that are inherent in the distribution of clips that have been obtained from broadcast programs.
One issue is that the content of broadcast programs is largely protected by intellectual property rights, such as copyrights. The copying and redistribution of this protected content requires the permission of the rights holders, who are generally not amenable to the unrestricted sharing by others of the protected content, via UGC sharing websites or any other online means. Accordingly, it is difficult to enable online sharing of clips obtained from broadcast programs without running afoul of the intellectual property laws.
Another problem that arises with clips obtained from broadcast programs results from the process by which the clips are obtained and then shared. When a broadcast program is initially broadcast to subscribers, the program is broadcast in its intended context. This context may include a particular time when the program is broadcast and a particular channel in which the program is broadcast. The context of a broadcast program may be maintained as program information that is stored separately in a program guide, such as an electronic program guide (EPG). A problem occurs when a user samples or digitizes a broadcast program, since the context information about the program is typically lost. This is because the subsequent sharing of the program is disassociated from the broadcast program's original context, for example, because it is no longer played in the original broadcast context. In particular, the content is no longer played at the time in which the program was scheduled to be played, in the channel or frequency on which it was originally contained, and possibly without other identifying context information associated with the original broadcast signal.
Moreover, broadcast programs often include embedded data to identify the program and/or other information about the program. In the case of a television program, for example, this data may be embedded in the VBI in the signal. The digitization or sampling process in which a user obtains a video clip from the original television broadcast typically strips this embedded data. The media content of the resulting clip is therefore no longer paired with the information about the broadcast program from which the video clip was obtained. When uploaded to a UGC website or other sharing system, the clip would thus lack identifying information about the broadcast program from which the clip was obtained.
The loss of program information for clips obtained from broadcast programs is unfortunate, since that information could be helpful in a variety of applications, including searching for the content on a UGC website by potential viewers and/or owners of the content, as well as pairing advertisements and other information about the content by an operator of the website or other source of the content. Users sometimes provide this information manually, but this is inherently unreliable and incomplete. What are needed, therefore, are methods and techniques for addressing the deficiencies that may arise when clips obtained from broadcast programs are shared online.